


daylight could be so violent

by etione



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Post C2E99, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:02:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25182202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etione/pseuds/etione
Summary: When Essek goes to greet his guest, he does so with full knowledge of the tenuous nature of his situation.or: essek and caleb talk about trust, shame, and patricide.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss & Caleb Widogast
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	daylight could be so violent

**Author's Note:**

> title from no light, no light by florence and the machine
> 
> shoutout to silverspirals for reading through this whole fic for me despite knowing nothing about critical role at all.

When Essek's wards thrum with an outside presence, he has been expecting guests for hours. It had not seemed right, heading to the Mighty Nein's estate himself, after everything, so he has stayed put, in his vast and empty manor, and pretended to occupy himself with a tome he has already read. The surprise is that only one person has come to call.

Essek stands, deliberately does not call on his magic to carry him, and walks to the front door on his own legs. He lifts a hand to open it. Pauses. Watches his fingertips tremble, and consciously forces them to still.

He closes his eyes, and places a smile on his face. He has smiled in countless terrible situations, after all. He had grown up in his mother's court, and leaders are not leaders if they do not sometimes allow horrible things. But Essek thinks this may be the worst situation he has been in yet. The man on the other side of the door has every tool necessary to destroy Essek's life. The only saving grace is that he has not yet done so.

He eases the door open. "Caleb," Essek greets, and the tension in his bones forces the warmth he had meant to speak with into cool disdain. Perhaps it says something about the way he has treated the Mighty Nein, that Caleb does not look put out in the least by his tone. 

"Essek," Caleb says. He seems nervous, almost, but Essek cannot fathom why. Right now, in this relationship, Caleb holds all of the power. "I wanted to speak with you. May I come in?"

There is only one thing Caleb would want to speak of. Essek nods, and stands aside. "Of course."

The actions are familiar, though the context is not. It is strange to realize how much has changed in the short time since Caleb last walked his halls. Weeks ago, Essek had played honored host to his friends. Now, he feels like a man condemned, leading his executioner to the block.

"So," Essek says, finally, when they are both seated in the parlor room, and he has no more excuses for silence. "What did you wish to speak of?"

Caleb fiddles with the flute of wine Essek had pushed on him, then places it firmly down on the table. "You already know, Shadowhand. Ignorance is not a believable look on you."

The title is a punch in the gut - a deliberate distancing. Essek takes it as his due.

"I don't know what you want me to say." Essek means it to come out as inscrutable, but it wavers in the middle, and instead veers into ragged.

There is a pause. Caleb takes a breath, deep and tired. "Were you telling the truth?" He asks. "When you said your greatest regret is causing the death of your father?"

It is so far from where Essek assumed this conversation would begin that he almost laughs, punched out of his lungs, before he gives the question its proper consideration.

He remembers telling them that, in a moment of hushed vulnerability. It had not been a lie; he can no longer hold onto his old intense bitterness. The way his father had looked, straight spined and unyielding, and entered the caverns of Bazzoxan, never to return, is never far from his mind. He thinks Caleb might want to hear a different answer, though, to hear Essek say, with all sincerity, that his greatest regret is and always will be how he had betrayed the trust of an entire country and sent it hurtling towards war. But the war is settled, now, and the time for lies is over.

"Yes," Essek says, "My father. Not the war." He watches Caleb cautiously, looking for signs of scorn, but Caleb only nods tiredly, and does not push.

"My greatest regret," Caleb says, slowly and with great deliberation, "is burning my parents alive."

There are many things Essek knows about Bren Aldric Ermendrud, who came before Caleb Widogast, some by his own admission and some by Essek's investigations, but this is not one of them. He has always known of the great sadness Caleb Widogast carries in his bones. The great guilt. But he has never known it like this, in the way Caleb's eyes slide away and his hands, very carefully, do not shake.

"I have done many terrible things. I have killed and tortured innocents. I have defiled bodies in the name of magic and progress. I have believed in the name of the great empire beyond all rational thought. And still, it is the screams of my mother and father that haunt my dreams most."

Caleb pauses, then, and makes eye contact with Essek like a weapon. "It is not a crime, to put those close to you first. That is only what it means to live."

There is grace, in those words, a forgiveness that Essek does not deserve, but would accept quietly if he were a different man. As it is, he cuts his eyes violently away and allows himself a second to clench his jaw.

"I do not feel shame for the outcome of my actions because of the war, or because of the dead," says Essek, feeling vicious in his rejection of Caleb's implicit mercy. "I feel shame because of what it has done to you." He gestures in the direction of the Xhorhaus, meaning to encompass the whole of the absent Mighty Nein.

Caleb is unflinching in the face of this, and smiles. It is cracked at the edges and unfamiliar on his features, though not as unfamiliar as it was when he first arrived in Rosohna. "I was the same as you. I am the same. For the longest time, I did not feel shame in my actions, except for the ways in which they endangered my friends. You cannot surprise me with that."

Essek's quiet rage stops, sputters, and refuses to start up again. "Why do they care?" he manages. "Why do you care?"

"For some of us," Caleb says, "you are our friend, and that is all they need to care. For others, I do not know that they care at all. Or, at least, they do not want to." He stops, starts again. "For me, I felt a fool, to have trusted you, when we learned the truth. But if I cannot forgive you, then how will I ever forgive myself?"

It is more selfish a reason than Essek expected, and somehow it makes Caleb's grace easier to swallow. But still, it doesn't seem a fair comparison to make. "I hardly think committing compulsory murder as a child stands up to inciting a war."

"I thought you said the war was going to begin anyway," Caleb counters, unblinking, before he subsides. "But you are right. That does not compare." He pauses then, clearly considering his next words. "I told you, once, that I wished to bend reality to my will."

"Yes," Essek says hesitantly, trying to follow the thread of Caleb's thought that has led him here. "I remember." It had been electrifying, to see his own hunger for understanding and knowledge reflected back in the eyes of another.

"We think similarly, I believe, in some ways. We want knowledge, and would stop at little to discover it. You, with your beacons and your war. Me, with time and reality as we know it." Caleb looks down at his fingers with a grim sincerity. "For a long time now, my truest wish has been to turn time back upon itself, and halt my own hand before I set my childhood home ablaze. To do so would be to undo my greatest shame, but it would also undo the choices and sacrifices and joys of a decade. It would also toy with the lives of millions.

“I have always known this, and yet it was not until now, when I found something of my own to lose, that I have begun to reconsider this ambition. To rewind time to assuage my years old guilt, or let it be to preserve the happiness I have found now. Are both options not fundamentally selfish?"

This blunt honesty is much more than Essek expected. That Caleb sits before him now, flaying his own skin open to convince Essek that a better path exists, is more than Essek can handle. It is disconcerting, after months of assuming he is more advanced than Caleb in every way, to find one field in which Caleb is undeniably superior. What Caleb has proposed is horrifying, but then, so was the war, to so many people.

"How do you know," Essek manages, through the tightness in his throat, "that I am not lying to you still? That I have not orchestrated your discovery of my actions? That I have not orchestrated everything in such a way that you would believe in my innate morality despite everything?"

Caleb's hand twitches, and he begins to worry at his fingernails. But despite the nervous tick, he only looks grimly serious. "I have discovered, in the past year, that this is the risk of trust. We do not know; that is true. We will never know. But then, how do you know that we are not lying to you?"

There are answers on the tip of Essek's tongue. He is young for an elf, perhaps, but older than Caleb and most of his compatriots, in years if not experience. He is the spymaster of a nation, well-versed in the inner workings of a mind, and he has never stopped his surveillance of the Xhorhaus. He knows their ticks, their idiosyncrasies, their motivations, their habits, their secret meetings. These things are all true, but so is this: they have surprised him - continually, embarrassingly, catastrophically - at every turn. His initial assessment of them was inaccurate, as was his second, as was his third, and there is no guarantee that his current assessment isn't inaccurate as well.

"I suppose," he says, loathe to admit weakness, "I don't. Not really."

Caleb nods, as if this is an unsurprising revelation, though Essek supposes it must be, to him. He cannot have been a part of the Mighty Nein for so long without becoming intimately familiar with their collective flightiness. Caleb stands, then, apropos of nothing, and extends his hand toward Essek in an unmistakable invitation for a handshake.

"I will trust you," Caleb says, and looks unerringly into Essek's eyes. “Will you trust me?”

Essek stands as well, spurred into action by the momentum of the moment, the commanding tilt of Caleb's wrist, before pausing. It is a strange feeling, to have revealed all the messiest parts of himself and been offered trust in return. It has been a long, long time since Essek has trusted anyone, let alone anyone who has proven so untrustworthy as Caleb Widogast and the rest of the Mighty Nein. In truth, he has little choice but to depend on them, when this band of roving incompetents has enough sway and evidence to have him killed. But also: he has already given them his most important pieces. He has, despite his best efforts, grown disgustingly fond of them. He has become true friends with them. He has shared his magic with them. What is just a little more, after all of that?

"I will trust you," Essek echoes, and reaches out.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this like a month ago all in one go and then suddenly realized that with cr starting up again it would only be a matter of time before all of this was obsolete. and well, there are enough good one liners in here that i would regret not posting it, so here we are  
> find me on tumblr @asuiru


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